A Utah man who claims he was severely injured after actress Gwyneth Paltrow skied into him took the stand Monday after lawyers revealed that a new piece of evidence had surfaced.
Paltrow, 50, is being sued for $300,000 by retired optometrist Terry Sanderson, who claims the actress skied into him from behind at Utah's Deer Valley Resort in 2016.
Sanderson took the stand Monday morning and recalled the ski collision and the "blood-curdling scream" he heard as Paltrow allegedly skied into him.
"There was nothing in front of me," he said on the stand. "I just remember everything was great, and then I heard something I’ve never heard at a ski resort."
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Sanderson said, "It was like somebody was out of control and hit a tree and was going to die, and that’s what I had until I was hit."
"That’s what is going on in your mind when you hear that scream?" his lawyer said.
"They’re really seriously out of control," Sanderson responded.
The retired optometrist said he was hit in the back and felt the two fists along with ski poles between his shoulder blades.
"All I saw was a whole lot of snow and I didn’t see the sky," he said. "I was flying in that sense, and I had no control."
Sanderson also declared on the stand that he doesn't "believe in celebrity worship," but he did email his children on the same day of the accident with the subject line "I'm Famous."
Paltrow's lawyer, Stephen Owens, asked questions regarding Sanderson's memory of the incident.
"Do you agree that you do not have a perfect memory of what you told others in the one, two, three minutes after the collision?" he asked.
Sanderson responded, "Answer would be, no, it’s not perfect."
"You don’t even remember that ski patrollers came by?" Owens said
"No, I don’t remember that," Sanderson said.
The retired optometrist got emotional while discussing his relationship at the time of the collision. Sanderson claimed he told his ex-girlfriend, Karlene Davidson, to leave him.
Davidson told the jury last week that Sanderson "started pushing [her] away" after the accident. "He had no joy left in his life," she recalled. "Not knowing what he was dealing with, I thought it was relationship-status things, and so I blame a lot of it on that … and now looking back, I think there was a lot going on."
Davidson was dating Sanderson at the time of the collision and said their relationship fell apart shortly after the incident. She described Terry as "fun-loving, joyful and very ambitious" with "a lot of energy." Davidson "had a lot of trouble keeping up with him."
Sanderson's testimony followed the introduction of new evidence in the trial Monday morning. The new evidence came from a viewer who has been following the trial and investigated the link in an email Terry Sanderson sent to his daughters. The viewer sent a copy of the message to lawyers, who had not been able to recover the link.
Craig Ramon, the only eyewitness to the crash, was called back to the stand briefly Monday morning to discuss the posting on Meetup.com.
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Paltrow's attorney plans to call the actress' husband, Brad Falchuk, and her children – Apple, 18, and Moses, 16 – to testify in her defense.
The "Shakespeare in Love" actress spent roughly two hours on the stand Friday as she answered questions from both Sanderson's lawyer and her own. She gave her account of what occurred – declaring multiple times that the retired optometrist skied into her from behind.
Paltrow explained she initially thought she might have been getting sexually assaulted when the collision happened.
"So, that was a quick thought that went through my head when I was trying to reconcile what was happening," Paltrow said. "Two skis came between my skis, forcing my legs apart, and then a body pressed against me."
"My brain was trying to make sense of what is happening," she added. "I thought, ‘Is this a practical joke? Is someone doing something perverted?’ My mind was going very, very quickly, and my mind was trying to ascertain what happened."
Paltrow noted it felt like they were "spooning" when the two fell to the ground. She also said that she's not claiming she was sexually assaulted but rather that was just "what went through [her] mind when it happened."
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The jury heard from two of Sanderson's three daughters last week. Polly Grasham and Shae Herath both testified about changes they have observed in their father's personality since the ski collision.
Grasham spoke about the moment she realized something was "terribly wrong" with her father, about a year or year and a half after the accident.
"His processing speeds," she said, were slower and "the effort that it took, definitely when we were in person … I felt like, wow."
"I almost expected drool to be coming out of his mouth because he was not engaged with anyone and had taken himself to a remote corner," Grasham added.
That's the moment she knew something was "terribly wrong," she said.
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Paltrow and Sanderson remain in a legal fight as a result of the 2016 ski collision that left Sanderson severely injured, according to the 2019 lawsuit. Jurors heard testimony last week from doctors speaking on Sanderson's medical condition prior to and following the collision.
Sanderson accuses the Goop founder of skiing off after the accident, which left him with a "permanent traumatic brain injury, four broken ribs, pain, suffering, loss of enjoyment of life," along with emotional distress and disfigurement, according to the lawsuit.
Sanderson originally sued the actress, Deer Valley Resort and an instructor for $3.1 million and claimed he was a victim of a hit-and-run. A judge dismissed the claim, and Deer Valley Resort and the instructor were removed from the lawsuit.
Paltrow has filed a countersuit, claiming that Sanderson previously admitted he didn't have a clear memory of the accident.
The actress is seeking a judgment for attorney fees plus $1.
Fox News Digital's Tracy Wright contributed to this report.
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